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Scenes from our video shoot for our ACI digital residency performance,
"Natural Toil in Wretche’D'etail"
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UC-DAVIS VIRTUAL RESIDENCY CONCERT!
THIS THURSDAY!!!
Arcomusical is bursting at the seems with excitement at this Thursday's concert of six world premieres by a wonderful group of faculty and student composers at the University of California, Davis. Please join us at our Arcomusical YouTube channel this Thursday, February 25th, at 12PM PST / 2PM CST, to be among the first to take in this 50-minute concert of six world premieres. We first met with our composer colleagues on May 13, 2020. The past ten months have been rich with slow, natural, gradual growth toward this wonderful musical goal. The result is a set of six brand new works for Arcomusical like nothing we’ve ever before played. These works have stretched our minds and spirits to reconsider what is “possible” for our instrument and our ensemble, and we are sincerely grateful for it.
Please join us for our first major event of 2021, and check out brand new music by these talented musical voices:
Orkun Akyol
Jacob Lane
Joe Peterson
Sarah Wald
Juan Diego Diaz Menezes
Paul Engle
WE WILL BROADCAST THIS CONCERT ON OUR
ARCOMUSICAL YOUTUBE CHANNEL!
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UC-Davis Composers (clockwise from top left): Orkun Akyol, Jacob Lane, Joseph Peterson, Sarah Wald, Juan Diego Diaz, Paul Engle.
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NEWS FROM BRAZIL!
NEW CAXIXI AND BAQUETAS!!!
Arcomusical is proud to announce a fair-trade partnership with one of our oldest mentors and contacts in Brazil, Mestre Valmir Damasceno of FICA-Bahia. Mestre Valmir is respected worldwide as one of the greatest practitioners of capoeira Angola and one of its foremost musicians and berimbau and caxixi luthiers. We turned to Mestre Valmir to request a set of caxixi and baquetas and decided to pay him exactly what we had been paying Dan Eastwood. Given the currency exchange at the moment, this opportunity served not just to find a new source of excellent instruments for Arcomusical and our customers, but to provide very real financial support for Mestre Valmir. Sadly, the pandemic in Brazil has been just as bad as the United States and in some ways worse in Brazil. The impact of inept and despotic leadership is sadly profound. Given the inability for capoeiristas to safely practice their craft due to the pandemic, Mestre Valmir lost his cherished space on the fifth floor of the Ester Moura Franco Building on Rua Carlos Gomes in Salvador. It was a space that Mestre Valmir had cultivated well over two decades. I remember first meeting him and visiting his space in 1999 when I first travelled to Brazil for research.
So, if you are looking for new baquetas and caxixi, look no further! Please visit our online store to purchase Mestre Valmir’s baquetas and caxixi. His instrument building business name is GungaOgum, the merging of two names: gunga (the name of the lowest and largest berimbau) and Ogum, the name of Mestre Valmir’s guiding spirit, the Candomblé Orixá, the Yoruban god of iron and of battle. These are strong instruments, superbly built and with an excellent capacity for sound. Arcomusical is proud to feature GungaOgum caxixi and baquetas and to support a wonderful friend and mentor.
Viva Mestre Valmir! Viva!
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The most beautiful collection of caxixi and baquetas, made by the master, Mestre Valmir.
Greg and Mestre Valmir playing berimbau together in the FICA-Bahia space on Rua Carlos Gomes.
Check out our website for caxixi and baquetas made by Gungaogum!
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